After years on the run, two convicts may never be found

By Wes Wolfe, Halifax Media Services

Published: Tuesday, October 22, 2013 at 02:41 PM.

That man, Richard Scott, was serving time at Central Prison for felony bigamy and misdemeanor abandonment in Gaston County. Less than two months into a nearly three-year sentence, he escaped and disappeared. He’d be 89 years old if he were still alive.

While we may never know what became of Lucas, Scott or Thompson, progress in security and technology has led to fewer escapes and fewer people still on the run.

“We used to have upwards of 1,000 escapes a year,” Acree said. “Now, our escapes every year are in the single-digit numbers. And, some of those people who got away years ago have just kind of disappeared and not come back.

“Some of the folks who are on that list we know where they are — they are incarcerated in other states, or other jurisdictions.”

G. Mark Jones, a criminal justice professor at East Carolina University, said events in the 1970s and 1980s led state correctional officials to reevaluate their policies and make changes.

He mentioned one aspect of change is better evaluation of prisoners going into work-release programs, so people more likely to escape are less likely to obtain those jobs.

“Of course, no prediction system is perfect,” Jones said. “You’re going to put the wrong person in the wrong program — they’re going to mess it up.”

KINSTON — One day in 1980, Brenda Lucas was on work-release duty at a McDonald’s, serving time for three drug convictions.

The next day, she was gone.

Donald Thompson, in prison for a Lenoir County drug conviction — along with convictions from Currituck and Wayne counties — walked off a work-release job in 1976.

In the proceeding decades, the trail went cold. As far as state correctional officials are concerned, they disappeared into thin air.

“It looks like, from our records, there’s really not been any significant leads since then,” said Keith Acree, state adult corrections spokesman for the state Department of Public Safety, regarding Lucas.

“She would be 63 now — she was born in 1950.”

Lucas was housed in the N.C. Correctional Institute for Women, convicted in Lenoir County of misdemeanor possession of a Schedule II controlled substance, misdemeanor of a hypodermic needle and misdemeanor possession of a Schedule IV controlled substance on June 3, 1979. She was to serve until June 9, 1981.

She made her escape Jan. 29, 1980.

Thompson received convictions for felony common law robbery in Wayne County on April 16, 1971, felony violating regulations on controlled substances in Lenoir County on April 22, 1971, and misdemeanor violating regulations on controlled substances in Currituck County on March 26, 1975.

As the convictions ran concurrently, Thompson actually served his terms for the drug charges, and was due for release on Oct. 20, 1977, on the robbery charge at the time of his escape.

“Donald Thompson was an inmate at Triangle Correctional Center, which is a prison that doesn’t exist anymore,” Acree said. “But, it used to be a minimum-security facility that was located right next to Central Prison in Raleigh. He escaped June 8 of 1976.

“His was also a walk-off from a work-release assignment outside the prison, although I don’t know where he was working — the records don’t indicate that.”

Acree noted Thompson’s file indicated he had family in New York in 1976, but there wasn’t much more information to be had.

Public records from the state Department of Public Safety show 149 people with active escapee profiles, from 2011 to the earliest known at-large escapee in 1947.

That man, Richard Scott, was serving time at Central Prison for felony bigamy and misdemeanor abandonment in Gaston County. Less than two months into a nearly three-year sentence, he escaped and disappeared. He’d be 89 years old if he were still alive.

While we may never know what became of Lucas, Scott or Thompson, progress in security and technology has led to fewer escapes and fewer people still on the run.

“We used to have upwards of 1,000 escapes a year,” Acree said. “Now, our escapes every year are in the single-digit numbers. And, some of those people who got away years ago have just kind of disappeared and not come back.

“Some of the folks who are on that list we know where they are — they are incarcerated in other states, or other jurisdictions.”

G. Mark Jones, a criminal justice professor at East Carolina University, said events in the 1970s and 1980s led state correctional officials to reevaluate their policies and make changes.

He mentioned one aspect of change is better evaluation of prisoners going into work-release programs, so people more likely to escape are less likely to obtain those jobs.

“Of course, no prediction system is perfect,” Jones said. “You’re going to put the wrong person in the wrong program — they’re going to mess it up.”

Jones also pointed to the ballyhooed case of Willie Horton in Massachusetts, who, while on a weekend furlough in 1987, committed assault and rape in Maryland. A Maryland judge blamed the Massachusetts furlough program and ordered him to be committed to a Maryland state prison.

The presidential campaign of then-Vice President George H.W. Bush used the incident to criticize his opponent, then-Mass. Gov. Michael Dukakis in 1988. The incident also led to a notorious independent expenditure television ad and a separate ad produced for the Bush-Quayle campaign.

“So, things like that kind of forced correctional administrators to take a hard look at this and programs like that to try to screen out people who might not be appropriate,” Jones said. “Or, just do a better job of making them more secure.”

He added the vast majority of escapees are found in short order because they didn’t plan for what next to do.

“A lot of them go straight back to their mom’s house, or something like that, and authorities are sitting there waiting on them,” Jones said.